"Our customer had been packing and displaying their product this way for some time so my new design would need to (1.) Retain the same "footprint"...meaning it could not take up more store counter space...(2.) It still needed to display the product well and protect it at the same time, and (3.) It needed to be a lot more cost effective"
For some time , our customer 0 3/8 x 3 3/8 x 2 ½ counter top display with a snap lock bottom.
The significant difference in the length ( 10 3/8 ) and the width ( 3 3/8 ) of this item , along with the design style the customer had been using , made for a very long and very narrow carton blank. This item was difficult to run through a folder / gluer machine and would often lead to increased set up times , not to mention a serious “ skewing “ issue ( meaning the carton was folding crooked through the machine ). In order to reduce the number of rejected cartons the folder gluer would have to run at a greatly reduced speed. With machine run time cost along with the fact that this item had to be die cut AND glued ( meaning two machine passes ) it was not the most cost effective way for the customer to present their product. Our sales rep and I decided to present the customer with a better solution.
They had been packing and displaying their product this way for some time so whatever I came up with it needed to 1. Retain the same “footprint”…meaning it could not take up more store counter space…2. It still needed to display the product well and protect it at the same time…and 3. It needed to be a lot more cost effective.
By switching the design from a glued snap lock bottom to a roll ends tuck top tray I was able to not only add to the rigidity of the display , I managed to remove an entire machine pass from the production process. Meaning this item no longer needed to be glued. And the assembly on the customer’s end only added one more small labor step. Also..I was able to keep the blank size at almost the same size it was before and instead of wasting a lot of interior board ( as the previous design had done ) I utilized this additional board to create inner “ dust flaps “….adding to the sturdiness of the display and providing an additional layer of board to protect the product contained inside. All of this while not only staying within the sheet size parameters , but actually reducing the cost of machine run time to the customer.
Jerry Murphy…Media Tech Designer 7 – 29 - 2015
